FATTENING WALL STREET — Mike Whitney reports on the rapid metamorphosis of new Fed Chair Janet Yallin into a lackey for the bankers, bond traders and brokers. The New Religious Wars Over the Environment: Joyce Nelson charts the looming confrontation between the Catholic Church and fundamentalists over climate change, extinction and GMOs; A People’s History of Mexican Constitutions: Andrew Smolski on the 200 year-long struggle of Mexico’s peasants, indigenous people and workers to secure legal rights and liberties; Spying on Black Writers: Ron Jacobs uncovers the FBI’s 50 year-long obsession with black poets, novelists and essayists; O Elephant! JoAnn Wypijewski on the grim history of circus elephants; PLUS: Jeffrey St. Clair on birds and climate change; Chris Floyd on the US as nuclear bully; Seth Sandronsky on Van Jones’s blind spot; Lee Ballinger on musicians and the State Department; and Kim Nicolini on the films of JC Chandor.

The Howling

by CHRIS FLOYD

Sparked by a deliberate provocation put together by Christian extremists, riots by groups of Islamic extremists are spreading across the world — a convenient symbiosis for both groups, as they use each other’s actions to “justify” their hysterically constricted worldviews.

There is an added layer to the reaction in the Muslim countries, as the extremists there can draw on the seething resentments built up by the depredations and atrocities inflicted indiscriminately on Muslims by the Western powers in recent decades, particularly since the launch of Terror War.

But of course these depredations and atrocities are the work of yet another group of sectarian extremists gripped by a hysterically constricted worldview: the Western power elites, who are maniacal adherents to the Dominationist cult. This bizarre but very powerful sect holds that American domination of the world, militarily and economically, is part of the divinely ordained structure of the universe. Those who adhere to Dominationist dogma and obey the dictates of the sect’s high priests in Washington are rewarded; but unbelievers, heretics and apostates are to be cast out, cursed, attacked and, when possible, destroyed.

In the last 11 years alone, state-backed Dominationist terrorists have killed far more innocent people than their counterparts among the scattered clumps of Islamic extremists around the world. More than a million people have been killed as a result of the Dominationist terrorist attack on Iraq, for example. Hundreds of innocent people in Pakistan have been murdered by the drones fired by Dominationist terrorists. Dozens are dying monthly in violent Dominationist attacks in Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines and elsewhere.

The senseless violence of the Dominationist sect is well-attested. The sect’s leaders brag openly about their use of violence; indeed, in the constant factional jockeying for power within the sect (a characteristic of all religious and ideological cults, of course), would-be leaders vie to paint themselves as the one most willing to inflict massive death and destruction on all those who dare challenge the Dominationist faith. All would-be leaders trumpet their willingness — their eagerness — to eschew mere man-made laws as they do “whatever it takes” to defend the faith and advance Dominationist supremacy over the earth. Torture, kidnapping, assassination and mass destruction are all considered divinely justified by the Dominationist extremists — and by the millions of people who actively support the factions within the sect.

In fact, the Dominationist extremists have far more support in their native lands than the riot-provoking Islamic extremists have in theirs. Muslims overwhelmingly reject violence, even in response to the relentless, murderous provocations of the Dominationists — as anyone who actually lives among large numbers of Muslims (as I do) knows perfectly well. Nor are the vast majority of Muslims taken by cheap tricks like the video posted by extremist Christians. As Ghaith Abdul-Ahad notes in an excellent analysis in the Guardian, “only a few thousand” Muslims”– out of 1.6 billion — have taken part in the protests, which, he points out, are being exploited by fundamentalist Salafi sects that have been marginalized by the Arab Spring revolutions and are now trying to claw into positions of power.

We might also note that the Dominationists have made common cause with violent Salafis time and time again over years — e.g., in Afghanistan during the Soviet period, in Iraq during the “surge,” and today in Syria. The symbiosis of violent extremists — Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Dominationist and others — is also a well-attested fact of history — and of human nature. Because at bottom, all of them share one fundamental, overriding principle, the common core of their faith (whatever its outward flourishes might be): the holiness of violence, the enforced assertion and/or imposition of their worldview by the repression or destruction of others.

As I said, it is rare to find an actual Muslim who actually holds such a view, or who supports any group that does. But you will find millions and millions of people in the West who believe that the Dominationist extremists are completely justified — even divinely justified — in their terrorist actions. In fact, we will soon see more than 100 million Americans go to the polls to vote for one of these state-terrorist factions who openly support torture, war and murder in the name of their primitive faith … and have history’s biggest war machine to back them up.

That’s a bit more scary to me than a few thousand marginalized, powerless people taking the bait of foreign provocateurs and local manipulators in a spate of riots. These outbursts are reprehensible, of course — another deadly ratcheting up in the endless, symbiotic cycle of Terror War violence that will do no one any good (except for the extremist elites, on all sides, who feast on blood and ruin). But set against the massively supported, millions-killing terrorism of the Dominationists, the riots are like a whisper in the howling of a storm.

Chris Floyd is an American writer and frequent contributor to Counterpunch. His blog, Empire Burlesque, can be found at www.chris-floyd.com.